Scars
by Bringer of the Storm
Summary: Strong bonds cannot be broken, no matter what happens, but they can break other things...Team 7, and what happens when their bond doesn't evolve the way it's expected to.


**Scars**

* * *

_(Everyone's seen the scars, one on each arm, and they know that they connect Team 7, but no one knows how.)

* * *

_

Ino knows. She may pretend she doesn't, but she knows.

Ino Yamanaka had happily been dating Shikamaru, even contemplating marrying him, when she came home one day and her parents told her that they had arranged a marriage with a clan heir. Her immediate thought was that it was Kiba's clan—oh God, the smell of the dogs—and then her second thought was that it might be Shino, which would be even worse—she couldn't stand insects, even if she was a kunoichi and could cut a man's neck open without a second thought.

At first, she had considered running away…until she found out it was Sasuke. While she had supposedly grown out of her Sasuke crush, the old obsession rushed back and she acquiesced. Life as an Uchiha would be pretty good, she reasoned, even though most of the clan was dead; besides, the only way she could marry higher was by marrying Neji, and _that_ certainly wasn't going to happen.

Ino went with him to the tribunal meeting, where the clan heads curtly informed Sasuke that the only reason they were allowing him to marry—and, indeed, allowing him to stay in the village—was because they wanted to keep the Sharingan alive and within the village. Sasuke calmly remarked that, given that he was a clan head, they would need a unanimous vote among the clan heads to either execute him or banish him from the village, and that was a vote they would obviously never get. Sasuke then grasped Ino by the elbow and led her out of the room, head held high. She and Sasuke married that night, and Ino went home with cotton-candy dreams of marriage and love and lots of children running around the house.

Life is certainly not how she expected it to be.

It's not that Sasuke is a cruel husband; far from it, actually. He makes sure that she's provided for and he does make an attempt to make sure she's comfortable in the empty estates. He's just inattentive at his best and cold at his worst, the latter being more common than the former. He only married her to restart his clan, figuring that mind-control jutsu would be a good addition to the properties of the Sharingan, and she knows that's why he married her.

She would feel better, though, if he were with that with everyone.

Either he's not aware of the time she followed him to training, or he just doesn't care. She was curious, though, so one time she decided to go see if he was as aloof with his teammates as he was with her. As she sat on a rooftop, far enough away that Sakura wouldn't be able to feel her familiar chakra, but close enough that she could observe Sasuke, she felt her heart break as she watched.

Sasuke wasn't particularly affectionate with his teammates. He rarely smiled or laughed, even when Naruto did something stupid. In fact, the only change in his expression was a slight smirk on occasion, especially when Naruto managed to steal Icha Icha from a distracted Kakashi, who then fought tooth and nail to get the precious book back.

Ino returned home, starting to regret marrying Sasuke.

Some nights Sasuke doesn't return home. These are almost always nights that he has been training with Sakura and Naruto, and they're almost always nights when he comes home missing socks or a shoe or with his shirt torn or stained in strange ways. Ino tries to ignore the implications of this, but finds it harder and harder to do. It's made worse whenever she sees Sasuke out with Naruto and Sakura or whenever she sees the way he looks at them when he thinks no one's looking.

Sometimes Ino sees Shikamaru around. He'll greet her cordially and ask her how she and Sasuke are doing. She will respond that they are fine, and ask him how he's doing as the ANBU tactician. He'll smile slightly and tell her that it's classified information, and she'll say that she's going to ask anyway because she's nosy like that. Shikamaru will then touch her shoulder, or her waist, or her hand, and Ino will return the touch on his shoulder, waist, or hand. They will share a look, and then walk off in opposite directions.

On the nights that Sasuke doesn't come home, Ino considers going to Shikamaru's house. She doesn't, though, because she knows that Shikamaru is far too noble to do anything with a married woman. She resigns herself to only touching him and speaking to him briefly, knowing it's the best she'll get.

When Ino becomes pregnant, Shikamaru will stop touching her altogether.

* * *

_(The scars down his arms are moonlight pale, stretching from elbow to wrist. Naruto is on his right, Sakura on his left, and together they complete the triangle that is his heart.)

* * *

_

Naruto married Hinata to save her.

The night Naruto came back from a four month long mission, a panicked Kiba caught him as he was entering the village gates. Hiashi had decided, Kiba said, and was about to have Hinata marked with the curse seal. Naruto had promised to change the Hyuuga, Kiba insisted as he shook Naruto by the shoulders, so save her!

Naruto found Hinata sitting on her bed, staring stolidly ahead. She didn't look at all surprised to see him, but then she seemed to have found the place inside that watches everything with apathy. Naruto grabbed her by the arm and dragged her of the Hyuuga compound and out Konoha's gates.

When they returned a week later, the Hyuuga clan met Naruto and Hinata at the gate, demanding that Hinata be returned to them so that she could be marked. Naruto refused to hand Hinata over to them, saying that Hinata was no longer a member of the Hyuuga and thus could not be forced to accept the mark.

Hiashi blinked once, then twice, then demanded to know what the hell Naruto was talking about. His body began shaking as Naruto silently held up Hinata's left hand with his own, letting the simple rings speak for themselves. Still shaking, Hiashi moved forward to strike, only to have his arm blocked by an enraged Naruto. Intelligently, Hiashi backed off quickly, noting how Naruto's eyes were slowly fading back from red.

Naruto collected himself, then told Hiashi that they had gone to Suna and had Gaara, the Kazekage, perform the ceremony for them, which meant that the marriage held no matter what village or country they were in. Since Hanabi had been declared the heir, and Hinata had not been marked prior to the ceremony, that meant Hinata was no longer a member of the Hyuuga clan at all since she had been cast out of the main family, but not yet accepted into the branch family.

The fact that she no longer had a family only hit Hinata after the Hyuugas had left.

Hinata leads a happy life now as an Uzumaki. Uzumaki Hinata, to be precise, since there are now many of them roaming around. She and Naruto have been happily spawning white-eyed blond children, who grow up lacking the Byakugan but have insane chakra reserves that come out even when the tenketsu have all been pressed.

As Hokage, Naruto has many duties that keep him away from home for long periods of time. The shaky alliance between Sound (now led by one of the genin—now jonin—that Sasuke had trained) and Leaf requires that the Kages meet at least once a month to argue over settlement terms. Mist and Leaf are also in the middle of forming a shaky alliance to stand against Grass, which is slowly becoming traitorous and is trying to ally itself with Waterfall. The impending war, among other traditional Hokage duties, keeps Naruto away from home quite often.

The Hyuuga blindness didn't spare Hinata, though.

When Naruto has a break from his duties as Hokage, he spends most of his time with his former teammates. They will often spend an entire day together, training in the mornings and afternoons, then spending the evenings either eating or just sitting around in the grass staring at the sky. Sometimes they will even spend the nights together at Naruto's old apartment, which still hasn't sold even after five years.

When he comes home in the morning, Hinata will greet him with a smile and some eggs, and his children will jump all over him in excitement. He will grin, ruffle their hair, and tell Hinata that Hokage business kept him out last night, and boy do those eggs look good. Her smile will remain on her face as she watches the man she loves.

The blindness can be defeated, however, if the Byakugan is not overused or is not used at all for an extended period of time.

She sees the way he looks at Sakura, as if he is watching something that slipped far away from him. She watches the way he interacts with Sasuke, the ease of familiarity that surpasses what she and Naruto share. She is not completely blind to what is happening, despite what everyone may think, but she willingly ignores it. Naruto does not neglect her, and indeed loves her as much as he can.

More importantly, she owes him her freedom, and her exemption from the fate that has taken Neji, Hizashi, and many others before her and them.

Secretly, Hinata has been researching ways to remove the cursed seal from Neji's forehead.

After all, she's seen first hand what curse seals can do to people.

* * *

_(Naruto unhesitatingly put Sasuke on his right arm and Sakura on his left, leaving thick scars that went crookedly along his arm. Sakura sighed and bandaged him up, asking him how the hell he could kill people with kunai if he couldn't even cut straight. He just beamed at her, ignoring Sasuke as he watched Sakura bandage him up.)

* * *

_

Sakura told herself long ago that she was giving up on Sasuke, and that Naruto was nothing more than a replacement for Sasuke in her heart. She knew that being in a relationship with her teammates was a stupid idea, and threesomes were generally frowned upon in Konoha, despite the fact that they said they were welcoming of all types of relationships. The old laws and regulations and attitudes that used to be officially recognized to protect the clans were still around, just unofficially now.

Sakura used to wake up in the morning thinking only of her teammates.

When Sakura wakes up in the morning now, her thoughts immediately turn to the person next to her—a boy-man-person, age 19, civilian baker. She has been married to him for two years now, ever since she reached the shinobi age of majority. He's a nice sort, she supposes, and since he's the blacksmith's boy, he brings the necessary bulk and strength to a family line of slight and feminine Harunos. Smiling slightly, she leans over to kiss him before running off to work, thinking about training with her teammates.

During the day, her thoughts focus on work, healing and stitching and suturing and knitting muscles back together. She goes from surgery to surgery, transplant to transplant, chakra system repair to system repair. Her mind is focused on saving the lives of the shinobi lying before her, trusting her to put her all into everything. And she does, of course she does, but when her teammates are before her on the table, she finds an extra bit of chakra that's only there for them. Given that both of her boys are ANBU—Sasuke is almost ANBU captain—they tend to come in with some really nasty injuries that require the extra bit of chakra.

In the evenings, though, she practices and trains with her teammates, and her thoughts are focused entirely on them. When they kick and punch and genjutsu the hell out of each other, it's like a dance between them, with Naruto's brashness offsetting her tactician's approach, and Sasuke's linear approach to fighting offset's Naruto's slightly more…improvised method. Often her practices run late, through dinner even, and she goes to the Ichiraku Ramen stand with them, sitting between the two boys. As they sit there laughing and joking, and occasionally harassing a bemused Kakashi, thoughts of her husband never cross her mind.

To her, it's normal. She thinks nothing of dropping everything and running to her teammates' aid, no matter what time it is or what she was in the middle of when they called. To her, her teammates always come first in her mind—after all, she's spent every day with them since she was ten, so naturally her loyalties would lie with them.

Her husband, however, resents the fact that she's willing to leave him even in the middle of sex to go running after Sasuke and Naruto after they've gotten themselves into yet another idiotic scheme. He sees the looks she gives Sasuke whenever he's around, and even to Naruto on occasion, sees the slight touches they exchange, sees the ease and familiarity that can only come with a certain amount of intimacy. He notices that, every once in a while, she doesn't come home from training. He might have left her—them—long ago, but shinobi villages don't allow divorces, an old precaution used to preserve and propagate the clans.

What he really wants to know, though, is how she's so inextricably linked to them that they take precedence over everything.

* * *

_(When it was Sakura's turn to complete the bond, she debated for days over who should go on her left arm. Finally, she put Sasuke on her left and Naruto on her right. After all, as she explained it to a sulking Naruto, she could always count on Naruto to defend her, to be her sword arm. Sasuke, however, would always need their protection.)

* * *

_

_(Everyone's seen the scars, one on each arm, and they know that they connect Team 7, but no one knows how. What they do know, however, is that those scars form a triangle-shaped wall that lets Team 7 out, but no one else in.)

* * *

... _

A/N: Yes, the tense shifts are on purpose.

…Crap, now I'm going to have to write a side fanfic just because I want to detail Gaara's reaction to Naruto and Hinata's request. And Shikamaru's reaction to Sasuke. And what happened to Lee. And…damnit, too much fanfic.

And no, these parts do NOT take place all at the same time. Sakura's is first, then Sasuke's, then Naruto's.

Yes, I know this is strangely written. It was meant to be all intertwined from the point of view of each Team 7 member, but Naruto's section ended up being mostly about Hinata, and Sasuke's section ended up being dominated by Ino. Whoops. The scars thing wasn't worked in as nicely as I would've liked it to be, but it was really only there to enhance the point about Team 7's bond.

As always, read and leave me concrit.


End file.
